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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24727774">Lifted High</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabbitprint/pseuds/rabbitprint'>rabbitprint</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Pyre (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Mother-Son Relationship, Transformation</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 02:16:09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,167</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24727774</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabbitprint/pseuds/rabbitprint</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Set shortly pre-game, Jodariel and Hedwyn, minor spoilers for backstories. </p><p>Jodariel has been there for Hedwyn before like this, when he had first started growing towards adulthood: worrying over the crack in his voice, the spots on his skin. His height. </p><p>She is here with him once more, as his body is forced to learn another change.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>48</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Lifted High</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>
  <i>Based off <a href="https://mobile.twitter.com/kasavin/status/948456929176698880">this comment</a> from Greg Kasavin, and the demon process in general.</i>
</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In dream-murk, enemies abound. Harps are everywhere, screeching as they lunge, dipping in and out of the fog as if they are the air itself given form and malice. They rip through the defensive line, gone before Jodarial can block them, vanishing as she whirls back and forth. To her left, one of the outriders hunches with his spear gripped in two shaking hands -- and then he is staggering, crumpling away as his entrails spill out from a slashed belly, and the enemy laughs and laughs.<br/>
<br/>
She knows that they are Harps, even though she cannot see them clearly. Nothing else is as repugnant.<br/>
<br/>
The blood of Commonwealth soldiers coats their razored talons. Feathers rush past, freckled with clumps of gore. Each death is a shrieked celebration. Jodariel wades through smoky wings that dissolve before she can strike them, roaring as she swings her sword around, her shield trying to block every conceivable angle at once. Her breath tastes sour in the roof of her mouth, hot and huffing. If the Commonwealth falls here, the northern defenses will buckle. Harps will flood like ants into the gap, gnawing and gnawing at the Bloodborder until they can split a line south to the nearest outpost, and slaughter the medical station tucked along the river.<br/>
<br/>
Jodariel cannot let them. She will die first, if only because she cannot bear to live through the consequences otherwise.<br/>
<br/>
Cackling bursts out of the sky to her left. The air is clogged with the reek of blood and shit from the dead. She grips her shield tighter.<br/>
<br/>
"Jodi?"<br/>
<br/>
The sound of her name is another battlefront she is forced towards. She pulls herself out of sleep with the same murky determination that has led her through swamps and midnight trails, trudging forward doggedly until she is blinking groggily in the dim light. Her wits feel muzzled, disoriented by the heaviness of her own body, as if she is drowning in too many layers of armor. Her flesh is a poor fit.<br/>
<br/>
The figure holding aside the bedcurtain is little more than a silhouette in the gloom, but the shape is familiar enough that Jodariel would not have mistaken him for anyone else, even if she had not already recognized his voice. <br/>
<br/>
<em>Is it past time for my half of the watch?</em> she wonders, her wits feeling as rusty as a neglected sword.<br/>
<br/>
"Jodi," Hedwyn says again, his voice a soft hush, pitched low to keep from waking Rukey. His headband is off, dangling like a broken banner between his fingers. He starts to bend towards her -- but then sways back in the same motion, a willow-tree caught in the leading edge of a storm. "I am sorry to wake you. Could you... might you have a look at me?"<br/>
<br/>
Jodariel wrinkles her nose in an undignified squint as she tries to stitch meaning to his words. For a moment as she rubs at her face, her mind registers only the difference in size between them, measuring the scale of her body and the littleness of him. Her automatic instinct is to invite him to crawl under the blanket for warmth, as if he were six years old again, huddled up beside her in search of a child's simple comfort -- as she had swept him up onto her lap so many times before, telling him stories before bedtime.<br/>
<br/>
But Hedwyn is a grown man now, and she is a grown -- <em>demon</em>, to be honest with herself, fully into her horns and height. And now both of them are <em>here</em>, in the Downside, where Rukey's muffled snores rumble in the next bunk over and the battlefields of above are years away.<br/>
<br/>
She hefts herself upright and twists off her bed, stifling a groan as her knees protest. The right one flares hot, tendons threatening to rebel, a bright stone of pain blossoming behind the kneecap. With a grunt, she reaches back to pull one of her blankets around her shoulders, and pushes out into the cramped kitchen of the blackwagon, where there is more light for examination and fewer Curs to complain.<br/>
<br/>
After uncovering one of the lamps, she waves Hedwyn towards her. <br/>
<br/>
One glance at his left temple answers her unspoken question. She does not need to check the other, but does so anyway, as if the world might change its mind in the time it takes for him to turn his head.<br/>
<br/>
It does not. Jodariel considers the signs, but it is already too late to lie.<br/>
<br/>
"They are coming in," she confirms grimly, and sighs, dumping the blanket on the back of the nearest chair. The kitchen is too small -- no, <em>she</em> is the one who is too broad, forever too big now -- and she turns away, searching for the tea leaves among their mismatched supplies. She does not have the grit in her to have this conversation without something hot in her cup and her belly, waking her up to proper attention. <br/>
<br/>
Hedwyn stands there for a moment, uncertainty radiating like heat from a fire. She can understand his concern -- but she is also very tired, and aching from trying to fit herself on a bunk too narrow for her body, and it is not as if haste will make anything about the situation better at all. <br/>
<br/>
Once she has the water going, Jodariel finally turns back to him, waving him over once more so that she can have a closer look at the small, dark nubs just starting to erupt from his skull. She is careful with her claws as she prods at the swollen, red skin around each horn, testing for infection. The flesh looks hot and irritated, even in the blackwagon's light. "It took me a decade before mine appeared. You always were fast to grow, even as a child."<br/>
<br/>
"It has been only three, maybe four years?" Hedwyn agrees, his voice a little breathless, pitched high in that manner that means he is trying to hold back actual terror. Jodariel has heard him use it on everything from a poisonous snake in his bedroll, to the blackwagon beginning to slowly sink into a mire. "It can't have been more than that. I've seen other exiles who have been here longer without changing. I thought -- I should have at least as long as you did, shouldn't I?"<br/>
<br/>
One of his hands lifts unconsciously as he speaks, answering her unspoken concern: it rubs hard against the lump of his right horn as if he could scrape it off like a chalk mark, the pad of his thumb shoving at the ridge. <br/>
<br/>
Jodariel frowns. <br/>
<br/>
"Don't fret with them. It will only irritate the skin further, and it may be years before they finish. Keep your headband wrapped around them instead, but not too tight." When Hedwyn does not stop -- not even fully aware of how frantic the motion is, perhaps -- Jodariel sighs in exasperation and reaches over to yank his hand away, pinning it firmly in her grip. "Hedwyn. <em>Enough.</em>"<br/>
<br/>
His fingers twitch against her palm, spider-skitters of protest. Even despite the carefully firm, neutral press of his lips, Jodariel can read in his body how truly afraid he is --  deep down to the quick of his spirit, even as he is doing his best to convince himself not to be. <br/>
<br/>
Only when Hedwyn finally forces his hand to go slack does she let go. Even so, Jodariel does not step back until he ducks a quick nod under her narrowed gaze, promising at least token obedience. "Once you escape, they should vanish completely," she promises, and tries not to sound dour. "So the rumors say."<br/>
<br/>
"Once <em>we</em> escape," he corrects, gentle even through his own worries. His smile -- easygoing and warm despite how it fish-flickers away -- is enough to loosen her heart despite her ruckled belligerence. Hedwyn had always been one of her easiest children; his resilience has never faltered, dutifully enduring all the losses which have steered his life. Even exile to the Downside has been something he had adapted to faster than she has, already making connections and new friends by the time she had found him, adjusting to his punishment as quickly as possible so that he could smuggle his grief away privately and allow the years to lacquer it like pearls within a shell.<br/>
<br/>
She cannot tell if it makes it better or worse to know that Hedwyn will eventually find a way to accept this, too.<br/>
<br/>
The kettle begins to leak a plume of steam. Hedwyn is faster than she, snatching it off the heat before it can screech and wake Rukey for certain this time. He pinches out the tea leaves with practiced dexterity, filling Jodariel's cup for her without needing to ask how strong she wants it. The cramped, contorted leaves begin to slowly unfurl in the hot water, releasing minerals from the river they had been washed in before being dried, shedding a coating of silt to settle at the bottom of the cup. <br/>
<br/>
When Hedwyn caps the tin, the thin rattle of its contents is a warning of how low their provisions are running. They have enough to feed the two of them and Rukey for a few more weeks, and Jodariel never sees the minstrel awake enough to eat -- or awake enough to do anything at all, really -- but a single string of bad luck will leave them teetering on the edge of starvation all too easily. <br/>
<br/>
They will have to trade for more soon. Jodariel does not know how quickly Hedwyn's change will progress, but they would be wise to prepare now. Extra water jugs. Medicines for pain. Additional supplies to cover the weeks when Hedwyn will not be able to aid them in foraging. Whatever they can dry and preserve, they should stock up on now. Whatever they cannot, they will need to sell for a profit.<br/>
<br/>
They will need to do all these things, Jodariel acknowledges grimly, before Hedwyn's horns start growing in earnest. <br/>
<br/>
To distract herself away from inevitability, she sighs, and reaches out to rest her hand against his forehead. Her fingers are a crown in his hair, claws gleaming in place of jewels. "Look at you," she grouses. "So big now, but I can still fit you in the curve of my palm as if you were a child."<br/>
<br/>
He squirms. "Only because you are taller now as well, Jodi."<br/>
<br/>
"Still so <em>small</em>," she intones dolorously, rolling up her eyes to the blackwagon's ceiling, and Hedwyn chuckles before ducking away.<br/>
<br/>
There is no kindness in dallying around the question. She can see it in the nervous way Hedwyn keeps glancing at her, wanting to know and not know at the same time. Reluctance drags on her anyway, like ice water on a march.  No matter his age, Hedwyn has always looked to her the same way: faithfully, believing in her greater knowledge and experience, in her ability to aid him no matter how frightening the night may be.<br/>
<br/>
His trust in her remains just as strong, despite the years. <br/>
<br/>
Jodariel takes a deep sip of the tea, letting the harsh bitterness of the leaf wash away the remaining mildew of sleep, and then begins.<br/>
<br/>
"Your horns will find their own shape over time. Tying them back like a tree branch will only give you a headache -- it will not alter how they grow." She does not bother to share how she knows; they are not here to discuss her past mistakes. "Your skin will turn thicker, tougher. Your muscles, too, will become far denser, particularly your neck and shoulders to support your horns. As they do, your vocal cords will shift. Your nails will also begin to harden, and will shed regularly once they finish becoming claws. You will wish to trim both them and your horns every few weeks, if possible."<br/>
<br/>
It is a list delivered without an ounce of emotion, but Jodariel knows the importance of sounding calm during these times -- of sounding clear, unworried, as if every possible outcome has already been evaluated and accounted for. All the orphans she had taken under her care had harbored fears of what was happening to their bodies as they grew older, changing from childhood to adolescence and then towards adulthood. She has given counsel on teeth that came in at crooked angles, and blemished faces that kept being picked at. On imaginary problems, such as accidentally swallowing the seeds of a fruit and becoming hysterical at the thought of a plant sprouting in their stomach. And of very real terrors, such as the time that one of her children had been so sick with a fever, she hadn't known if they would survive, even with the medicines from the doctor -- but Jodariel had followed the same course to keep her own panic under control, instructing one of the other children to bring washcloths and water, her voice steady as she had listed off what they could do next. It was something for them all to cling to: something measured, understood, known.<br/>
<br/>
Once, she had been there to listen to Hedwyn when his voice began to crack and stubble had first started to grow along his jaw, and he had attempted to teach himself -- badly -- how to shave. She has heard his fears about his height, about his complexion, his body changing around him as he had fumbled his way into adulthood.<br/>
<br/>
This is much the same. <br/>
<br/>
"The hooves are the hardest part." Jodarial counts off the symptoms as dispassionately as she can. Too much detail will only terrify. Not enough will be even worse. "As your weight begins to increase, you will notice your feet beginning to hurt more, and the bones will ache. Your toes will begin to swell. The gaps between them will lessen, until it appears as though you have a lump of dough instead of a foot. The nails will loosen and fall off on their own, flaking like a scab." That had been one of the most frightening changes; Jodariel had been too afraid to look, and too afraid <em>not</em> to. Even now, she remembers vividly how they had both looked <em>and</em> felt like half-cooked sausages, aching no matter how many times she had soaked them in the cold, brackish water of the nearest stream for relief. "You will need to wrap them in rags while this is happening. Do not try to fit them inside a shoe."<br/>
<br/>
Hedwyn is silent throughout her warnings. He ducks his head, unable to keep from looking at his battered boots; the moment he glances at them, he goes completely still. There is a seam wearing out in the left one that has been letting in the damp for months. They are halfway towards gathering enough howler hide to trade for repairs to it, the next time they are in Hollowroot.<br/>
<br/>
"I suppose I needn't worry about new footwear then," he tries to laugh. It is a familiar sound, even flimsy and empty of any real humor. That familiarity, too, is exactly how Jodariel can tell that Hedwyn's optimism is strung through with an undercurrent of desperate misery, like the time he had broken his toe and had hidden the injury from her, until he had finally convinced himself that an infection would cause it to rot off. <br/>
<br/>
She cannot bring herself to match his levity, as if they should both brush aside his emotions and pretend that none of it matters. Instead, Jodariel swirls her cup, watching the thin current of silt whirl at the bottom. "The full change may take years, either way. The rate of it is different for everyone, or so I have been told. The hoof itself will grow in after the bones of each foot finish fusing together, and that is how you will know how much longer you must endure it. After they have hardened, you will need to learn how to keep them clean and dry, or the hooves will take an inflammation. It will be hard to walk," she admits, remembering her initial, limping steps in those days. "Your center of balance will be changing as well, and will continue shifting until your horns fully come in. But it all happens in equal measure," she adds, watching gloom seep further into Hedwyn's expression. "Your horns will never outweigh your ability to carry them."<br/>
<br/>
She can see the way that she had guessed at least one of his fears correctly by the way Hedwyn's shoulders visibly relax, his worries latching on to this one particular reassurance. Then curiosity overrides all the rest, as she should have known it would. He cocks his head, suddenly thoughtful as he asks the same, inevitable question she once had posed herself. <br/>
<br/>
"Why?"<br/>
<br/>
There is too much in that single word to address at once. Jodariel casts a despairing glance at the grainy liquid remaining in her cup, and then forces herself to down it all in a single gulp. <br/>
<br/>
"I need to stretch my knees," she claims, to buy herself time. "Since I am already awake, I may as well take my part of the watch early. Fill a jug with the rest of the hot water and the leaves to steep, and we may as well bring it outside."<br/>
<br/>
She leaves the blanket where it is; there is no need to stain the cloth with dirt, not when it is hard enough to find a proper chance to wash up in the Downside. For once, she is glad for the excuse to move slowly, walking as quietly as she can so as not to wake Rukey further -- or as quietly as she can pretend herself capable, when she can feel each board of the blackwagon creaking under her hooves. <br/>
<br/>
The minstrel, of course, does not stir as she passes. He never does, perpetually slumbering in the common room with his hat drawn low across his features, the edge of it dragging a shadow cross-wise along his mouth.<br/>
<br/>
Parked for the night, the blackwagon hunkers down in a small gulley formed by the natural rolling of the prairie. Its canopies are staked out, giving it the shape of a brooding hen. There has been no signs of howlers for the last few leagues, and they are near enough to Hollowroot that either their fellow exiles have provided a better meal for the hunters, or luck is briefly on their side. The nearest hillside is not even particularly rocky: the slope rises only by gradual degrees, offering a decent vantage point of the leagues around them. The Downside is never safe -- but this is as close as it comes, allowing Jodariel enough confidence to stray outside the ring of their torchlights, though not too far. <br/>
<br/>
Tonight, the skies are clear enough that she does not need a lantern to see her way. Stars glitter in full display above the Downside Prairie, washing everything in a milky haze. Capriast, Lenoriel, and Scorpus -- so many of them that Jodariel recognizes, and yet none of them point to the exit out. She wouldn't have known it even if they did; she is no Reader, and the Books are stubborn puzzles to her, taunting her with intricate shapes, but little more.<br/>
<br/>
Ignoring the view, Jodariel climbs up the hill with a grimace, each step reminding her of too many hours spent riding the blackwagon instead of walking beside it. She finds the nearest soft spot and settles herself down gingerly, stretching out her legs and scowling against the pain as she flexes them. Each time, they take a little longer to move fluidly again; each day she wakes, they are a little stiffer.<br/>
<br/>
They will only get worse if she does not stretch them, until the day comes that no amount of walking will help at all. She will die in the Downside, buried among the rest of the shades in Coldmoat, too old and aching to ever get out.<br/>
<br/>
She had hoped, a little selfishly, that Hedwyn would have been distracted enough by the stars overhead as to turn his attention to the matter of searching for a Reader instead, but -- if anything -- his spirits only pick up now that he is outside, and can speak more freely. "Do you think the Minstrel is an exile as well, Jodi?" He clambers up the hill with none of the difficulty she had, and she tries not to be envious. "He does not seem to be a demon yet, though I have not seen him without his hat. Perhaps he was born in this land. What happens to children here, in the Downside? Are they immune to this place, or does the change take them too?" <br/>
<br/>
The rhetoric of the question earns Hedwyn the most dubious stare that Jodariel can manage. "You <em>cannot</em> mean to find out for yourself," she points out bluntly. "Is there a lover here you haven't told me about yet?"<br/>
<br/>
Caught short by reality, Hedwyn blinks, and then swallows down a noise of chagrin. "No -- I just." He shakes his head in a short, rough denial, shoulders slumping as his burst of energy bleeds out. "It does not seem fair for children to be punished as exiles as well. What offense could they have possibly committed?"<br/>
<br/>
"They were born," Jodariel answers heavily. "In the Commonwealth's eyes, they are the children of criminals. That is enough."<br/>
<br/>
The words are more astringent on her tongue than any Downside tea. No sugar can disguise the poison of their logic. And yet -- treacherously -- Jodariel can remember that same argument being so simple and true once, long before she had climbed the ranks to Captain. It had been delivered by every commanding officer she had known, back when she had been younger on the Bloodborder; she can still clearly recall the first Harp nest she had ever spotted in person, and then the first innocent time she had questioned who they should and should not kill in the skirmish to come.<br/>
<br/>
<em>All of them</em>, had been the answer, and then when she had asked about non-combatants, about elders and infants, every soldier nearby had roared in amusement.<br/>
<br/>
<em>And when they grow up to slaughter us in return? Answer me that, recruit. Can you pretend to be blameless when it ends up being </em><b><em>your</em></b><em> actions that cost our people their lives? Harps turn out to be killers, every single one. They've no choice about it. Like spiders, it's in their instincts. </em><br/>
<br/>
She had believed it then, when she had been younger and her enemy had been faceless. When every Harp had wanted to kill her anyway, so it had only seemed reasonable to kill them first. When the idea of Harp children had been only a hollow word upon the air, death sentences to be passed without bothering to see them first. <br/>
<br/>
But she had known the cost of her insubordination in advance. Hedwyn was a soldier's boy, his birth-mother slain by the very same enemy he had ended up courting; he should have never been swayed to begin with.<br/>
<br/>
<em>The Harp who deceived him must be laughing herself to sleep every night</em>, Jodariel thinks sourly. <br/>
<br/>
When she does not speak further, shackled by her own brooding, Hedwyn is the one to tentatively restart the conversation. "This change -- I have never asked, but I have heard the rumors. Is it truly related to our punishment as exiles?"<br/>
<br/>
Jodariel manages another swallow of the tea, and passes the jug back to Hedwyn's waiting hand. "Most assume so." Harboring superstition is a poor habit for a soldier -- but in this, she has no better explanation. "The demon who aided me when my horns were first coming in said the same. He said that the weight of our horns is the weight of the hatred from those living above us. They are the physical manifestation of that scorn, that contempt. Their heaviness is meant to drag us low, forcing us to stoop and then grovel in the dirt, our eyes to always be cast down in shame. Even if we resist being humbled, our horns will bow our heads for us."<br/>
<br/>
She lifts her hand, knowing how the motion echoes Hedwyn's earlier fretting, and runs her fingers carefully over her right horn. There is a nick near the tip from where she turned her head too fast in the deadwagon a week ago, and slammed it against a railing. Even after half a decade, they still do not feel completely part of her, except when she injures them; she does not know if they ever will, or what it will mean if they do. <br/>
<br/>
When they do. <em>When</em>.<br/>
<br/>
"And that is why Soliam Murr's horns were the largest and heaviest of all," she concludes dispassionately. "His head pulled to the ground in eternal begging, crying out for a mercy that would never be granted. The resentment and despair of his people followed him down here and became a curse, so that he would finally know the pain he had inflicted upon them. Now that same grudge continues to haunt all who resemble him, loathed as deeply by their own people as Soliam Murr had been."<br/>
<br/>
Hedwyn absorbs this story with the same rapidity of every other legend she had taught him in his youth, reciting back every half-formed tale she could think of in order to keep him occupied. "But you are not the Emperor, Jodi. How could that much hate possibly be aimed at you? At <em>any</em> of us?"<br/>
<br/>
She shakes her head, feeling the lumbering sway of her own skull, the solid mass of it -- like the sword she once swung, the shield strapped to her arm. "They do not need to know me to despise me. The label of traitor is enough to earn any soldier's malice. I, too, once spat upon the ground at such a word, sneering at people I never knew the names of. And now I carry that same hatred upon my skull, and it casts shadows wherever I look. For that reason, I cannot say that my horns are unfair."<br/>
<br/>
She does not want to say the rest. She was a soldier -- <em>is</em> still, in her heart. Every Commonwealth fighter who has ever been injured on the front lines has cause to hate her. Every family member who wept over news of a loved one, every veteran who lost a comrade to battle or subterfuge. Every empty grave that lacked a body to properly fill it, the victims never recovered from wherever they had fallen. Even the Harps would rejoice at her punishment. <br/>
<br/>
All of them have just cause to relish her misery. She cannot deny it to them.<br/>
<br/>
Hedwyn is still too clever for his own good; quick enough to set aside his own fears in light of the greater riddle, he considers the implications without flinching. "But then, why the rest of it?" he presses, wincing as he takes a swallow of the tea before handing it back. "From what you have said -- what you have <em>lived </em>through -- the change is a balanced one. Why punish us, and then grant us relief? Is it to extend such cruelty even further, so we do not perish too quickly before we suffer?"<br/>
<br/>
Jodariel squints down at the jug, its contents murky in the starlight. She takes a swig, and lets its bitterness console her. She has never been one for spouting off pretty fantasies; the words feel false already from her mouth, and she has not even said them yet.<br/>
<br/>
"<em>If</em> the stories are to be believed," she begins grudgingly, "it is the scorn of others that gives us our horns. Alone, their weight would keep us from ever being able to participate in the Rites. We would be doomed forever to remain here, crawling in the dirt until our necks finally snap, or we give up and let the howlers devour us."<br/>
<br/>
Extending her arm to its full length, Jodariel splays out a hand against the night sky, stretching it wide before closing it into a massive fist. Each claw of her fingers presses against the toughened skin of her palm, a dull warning of how easily they can tear through weaker hides.<br/>
<br/>
"But the rest of the transformation -- our vigor, our endurance, the ability to lift our heads up once more -- that comes from a different source." Flexing her hand open and closed again, Jodariel lowers it after one last stab of her fingers at the stars, as if she could rake them down like clusters of grapes from the vine, scattering them into the grass to be stepped upon. "It is no curse. It is a gift from those above who still keep us in their hearts, praying for our survival. Even when all seems lost, your strength will be proof of that. Someone back home is hoping for you to overcome all of this. Someone up there believes in you."<br/>
<br/>
She glances over when she hears the rustle of Hedwyn's robes as he shifts position, legs crossed and leaning forward as alertly as if he was listening to an instructor at a demonstration. "Then that means that even the Emperor..."<br/>
<br/>
"Yes," she finishes heavily. "Even the Emperor had someone who loved him enough to wish for mercy. Even him."<br/>
<br/>
The story sounds just as ridiculous now as when Jodariel had first heard it, trembling and cowering under a thin blanket, her body betraying her with each fresh growth. Her imagination had already festered into nightmares by the time the other demon had found her; she hadn't known what else to expect from her transformation, or if she was at risk of dying as some half-shaped thing that lacked the fortitude to survive the process, like a caterpillar unspun from its cocoon early to writhe and die. <br/>
<br/>
In her misery, she had clung to the stranger's far-fetched tale anyway, grateful for any promise that meant something other than despair at the end. <br/>
<br/>
She sees the same hope of it blooming in Hedwyn's eyes now: her dreamer-child, overbrimming with ideals, so willing to trust in the goodness of others that he was eager to seek it out even in the talons of his enemies. "Gol Golathanian, surely," she hears him mutter, nodding along with his own reasoning. "Or perhaps after he joined the Emperor in the Downside, there was someone else above. As for myself -- I doubt that manner of forgiveness would come from my fellow soldiers." His face softens suddenly as a swell of affection washes over it. "Surely Fikani must be thinking of me. It has to be her."<br/>
<br/>
He mulls over the conclusion, tilting his head back to let the starlight wash over his face. When he speaks again, it is in a reverent whisper to the sky, an evocation of mystery that drifts along on its own yearning. "So, then. Even if you think yourself utterly friendless -- even if you are as hated as Soliam Murr, or if you feel that no one would bother themselves to care for you, it does not mean you are alone. No matter how great the hatred stacked against us, so long as a single person holds compassion for us in their hearts, it will not overcome us. We can have the strength to fight back." <br/>
<br/>
He falls silent for a moment, gaze still fixed on the sky. And then, even more quietly, comes the whisper: "No one is truly abandoned. Not even in the Downside."<br/>
<br/>
In the years since her own horns first burst through her skin, Jodarial has debated similar words. Each time, they had sounded equally naive. Yet somehow, the possibility sounds less ludicrous when offered up by a person willing to embrace it -- as if Hedwyn's awe, his wonder, his <em>faith</em> can make it real, patching up all the holes in its logic and building a ladder for them all to climb out on together. <br/>
<br/>
"It is most likely a complete and utter lie," she insists. She does not share her thoughts further: that no matter what promises this Fikani may have made to Hedwyn's face, the Harp has not bothered to share his punishment with him. Someone else above must hold love for him. Jodariel's own is already by his side. "Though I suppose there are worse things to believe in, down here."<br/>
<br/>
If she had feared her lukewarm denial would hinder Hedwyn's renewed spirit, then she should have known her own child better. The light is in the whole of his face now, straightening his shoulders and kindling a conviction that not even the Downside can extinguish. "But perhaps it <em>is</em> fact," he breathes softly, and his smile is stronger this time, his confidence real. "And you, Jodi -- do you think it was the children you spared who are thinking about you now?"<br/>
<br/>
She scoffs in protest. "Foolishness," is all she says out loud. <br/>
<br/>
<em>They grew up to be killers</em>, is all she hears instead, tasting the words of another life. <br/>
<br/>
Another's scorn. Another's spite, hating freely without needing a name or face to define it.<br/>
<br/>
Another's generosity, given to strangers she will never see again.<br/>
<br/>
Night insects chirp around them, piping through the grass. Jodariel assesses the prairie around them with one long, final stare, checking for any signs of movement. "What does it matter?" she relents. "If we return, then we can find out the truth of it for ourselves. Until then, there's no point in wondering." Planting her hands against the ground, she levers herself up, suppressing a groan. With deliberate indifference, she flicks grass off her thigh. "Enough. Finish up the tea. I'll take the watch from here. You should sleep."<br/>
<br/>
Hedwyn is obedient enough in this, though he refuses to stop smiling; the curves of his mouth are gentle in the corners, eyes distant as his attention continues to wander through fanciful thoughts. He ties on his headband without being prompted, leaving enough slack in accordance to Jodariel's instructions. She huffs to disguise her satisfaction, reaching out to smooth down the fabric over his temple where the bump of one horn safely hides.<br/>
<br/>
"Did he ever get out, this other demon who helped you?" Ducking to pick up the tea jug, Hedwyn tilts the container back and forth to judge how much liquid is left by the sloshing. "The Rites were still going on then, weren't they? He might have freed himself before they ended."<br/>
<br/>
It is shameful to admit that she barely remembers the man's face -- shameful, and no less true. "If he did, I do not know. I never caught his name. But he was kind to me when I was afraid, and his hands knew their work when my hooves were coming in and I was afraid I could never walk again. He would deserve to escape." The words come out with more force than she expects; Jodariel pauses, and then repeats them, laying each syllable out like a stone. "He would deserve it."<br/>
<br/>
Hedwyn waits for her to take the first step down the hillside, and then falls into place beside her. "If you make it up there and he hasn't returned yet, Jodi," he suggests, stubbornly optimistic, "then you can always be one of the people giving him cause for strength."<br/>
<br/>
<em>Impossible</em>, is what she should say. Sentimentalism is more than a weakness: it is a self-deception that will only see you and your loved ones slain. Even if she could recall the man in perfect detail, the chances of ever finding him alive are infinitely small, and dwindle further by the year.<br/>
<br/>
But even as she opens her mouth, Jodariel finds herself relenting to a different current of emotion instead, the same one that had shifted her along another course so long ago, when she had looked upon the children of her enemies and had made a choice that no one had expected. It is a small trickle of warmth, only reluctantly tolerated. But it is as much a part of her as her new height and voice and the horns she does not yet feel, and she will not deny it any less.<br/>
<br/>
She slows to a halt, looking back up towards the sky and all its secrets, glittering with beauty even as it imprisons her beneath its brilliance. To what are either lies or promises, and strangers who have offered malice and kindness without condition of her identity, building one chain of hands to help someone else up, and another to shove each other down. <br/>
<br/>
Her horns are as light as feathers upon her skull.<br/>
<br/>
"It is true that I might never know the demon who helped me. I doubt I will ever have the chance to thank him properly in turn. But wherever he is now, and in spite of whoever stands against him," Jodariel declares, not caring if she addresses the stars themselves in defiance, or the Commonwealth's unified judgement, "then, if my word has any value left at all: may his head be forever lifted high."<br/>
<br/>
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